The world of Sarojini Naidu

The first segment of this exploration of one of India's foremost poet-politicians appeared last week.

--- Literary Editor

Sarojini Naidu's early speeches, whether addressing students, women in general, purdanashin women, community of Muslims, Hindus or any other religion were electrifying. She was a leader who inspired people and like a psychologist understood mass behaviour. There was devotion in every work that Sarojini did.  She remained steadfast in her love for Dr. Govindarajulu Naidu, beginning in her young age and straddling her whole life with him. The some devotion and steadfastness she manifests in her endeavours as she deemed them urgent.
 She addressed students in the following words:
"If facilities come your way, travel; because the knowledge that comes from living in contact with men and minds, the inestimable culture that comes through interchange of ideas, can never be equalled and certainly not surpassed by that knowledge between the covers of text books."
Forceful words always come from her speeches with the noble purpose of guiding them to attain the best, the most just and ethical leading to the apex of the brotherhood of man that she envisioned beyond the borders of her country yet to be free. She had an obsession with the conception of 'True Brotherhood' --- an influence that she had from the concept of 'liberty' advocated by Shelley and Keats 'brotherhood of man'. She was resolute in crystallizing her ideals in their actuality. She believed that a person engaged in politics for the people must act as "a great social force" and not be a mere demagogue or a humbug as is the practice these days. Sarojini remained focused on subjects like "national freedom, the emancipation of women, messages to the youth of India, and Hindu-Moslem unity" in the early twentieth century as these were the burning issues of the time. She would take her audiences further to make them aware of the "light of spirit" latent in every individual, man and woman, that could contribute to a "rekindling of the manifold fires of national life." She quoted Omar Khayyam in this respect:
"I set my soul into the invisible,
Some letter of that after life to spell,
And by and by my soul returned to me
Answered, myself am heaven and hell."

As a poet, she did not keep herself confined to verse and its beautiful reverberations only but always saw to it that it rendered  a great service to humanity. To her, poetry in such circumstances was like a weapon that would wipe out all bondage that keeps a nation in the dark. And that is why she could quote from great minds at ease. In her view, all human beings, no matter how humble or small, are 'necessary to the divine scheme of eternal life'.

The person whose influence on Sarojini was first and foremost was Gopal Krishna Gokhale, "India's steadfast, moderate, gentle patriot" who laid the foundation of her life in politics. She took Gokhale as her guru and in 1912 in Calcutta, within a few weeks, real intimacy and 'lovely comradeship' grew between them when he said to Sarojini, "Hitherto I have always caught you on the wing, now I will cage you long enough to grasp your true spirit." In general, Sarojini valued friendship highly since she was a young girl and kept them attached life long. She believed not only in making but also keeping friends. Among others, her early friendships with Umar Sobani, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and Lady Mehta are noteworthy. In her volume of poetry called The Feather of the Dawn, she dedicated some of her verses to Umar Sobani, who was "a rich Muslim philanthropist of Bombay and among the first of that community to join the non-violent struggle started by Mahatma Gandhi." She expressed her heartfelt grief at the death of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta who because of all his sterling qualities of character "was known as the uncrowned king of Bombay". It was a greater loss to Sarojini as Sir Pherozeshah died in the same year as Gokhale. Sarojini came to know Mahatma Gandhi through Gokhale in London in 1914 when the First World War broke out. It was in that year that she was made a member of the Royal Society  of Literature. Before her no Indian woman had been given this honour.
She was a magnanimous person who knew how to admire a person wholeheartedly. She never hesitated to give the person his or her due. It is not only that she admired them but also devoted her verses in salutation to them. In her third book of poems, The Broken Wing, which appeared five years after The Bird of Time, she writes verses in memory of Gokhale and also there are verses to Gandhi and MA Jinnah. "Strangely she brings these two builders of India and Pakistan into close contact in her book, and indeed in those halcyon days of Hindu-Moslem unity, they were together." One of Sarojini Naidu's poems, The Call to Evening Prayer, evinces "her belief in the sacredness of all religions." Among her friends who were Muslims, the Ali Brothers, MA Ansari  and Mohamed Ali Jinnah were prominent. Sengupta narrates that even under the most unfavourable situation, she would never lose track of her friendship with Jinnah. Sir C.P Ramaswamy Aiyar, a great name in the political history of India, narrates a very interesting incident in this regard. Once, in 1946, he went to see Ms Naidu and by the by told her that he had written a book titled Some Great Leaders. Immediately she asked him if he had included Jinnah and when the answer was in the negative, she was angry with him and said, "But Jinnah is a great man. You should have included him in your book." She held people of worth belonging to any religion, caste, creed-gender, Indian or Westerner equally in high esteem with an open mind. Such was her liberality of mind.
Sarojini's poems were forceful and inspirational and cast a magic spell on the audience whenever she recited them. There were messages disseminated to the people as to their duties freeing the motherland from the British colonialists. It is amazing how her poems and likewise her speeches would invigorate peoples. One such poem was Awake, which she recited at the Bombay session of  the Indian National Congress in 1915. It created 'a stir'. At about the same him she was much drawn to Mahatma Gandhi's policy and practice of Satyagraha and the 'little man' became almost her object of worship and gradually claimed her attention, more fully than Gokhale had ever done. In the Indian National Congress in 1916, Sarojini delivered a number of brilliant speeches that caught the attention of a young Jawaharlal Nehru and gave him much inspiration to join the noble cause. Nehru said, "I remember being moved also in those days by a number of eloquent speeches by Sarojini Naidu. It was all nationalism and patriotism and I was a pure nationalist, my vague socialist ideas of college days having sunk into the background."
In this meeting Dr (Sir) CP Ramaswamy Aiyar, a lifelong friend of Sarojini Naidu, also spoke brilliantly. Their two families knew each other so well that Dr Aiyar says, "Sarojini learnt the lesson of tolerance and communal harmony and appreciation of Islamic culture in all its aspects from her father. The true greatness of father and daughter lay in the fact that they were 'dreamers of dreams ........ "
She took it upon herself to speak at the All-India Muslim League meeting at Lucknow in December 1916 as since for a long time "she had been a comrade of the younger generation of Mussalmans, and a champion of the rights of Moslem women." Sarojini along with one of her 'greatest foreign friends', Ms Margaret Cousins, wife of the philosopher and poet James Cousins, worked relentlessly for the cause of Indian women. There were other leading ladies working with them.
All of Sarojini's speeches were aimed at elevating the consciousness of her audiences, to make them see the purpose of those and to have a clear vision of the future course of action as enunciated in her passionate, fiery and highly brilliant emotive elocution. Wherever she spoke, she won the hearts of the people with her equipoise between the genius of a poet and a true patriot. One such inspiring speech to the public not of any specific denomination was the history of Imam Hossain, (mistakenly printed as Imam Hassan) his valour and his embrace of death at the hands of a tyrant for the sake of upholding the truth. She says, "......if we have the truth within us, we, children of the Shastras, we children of the Koran, if we have the truth with us, if we are spiritually the descendants of Harishchandra  and of Imam Hossain (printed Hassan), we shall also die so that truth may live."
Thus she spoke not only of throwing out the hated Rowlatt Bill but to drum up support for what had been her lifelong mission, that is, Hindu-Muslim unity. This period saw the Jallianwala Bagh massacre shaking up an entire India. Rabindranath Tagore gave up his knighthood; Mahatma Gandhi returned the medals he had received for his war work, and Sarojini Naidu surrendered her Kaisar-i-Hind. Her passionately fiery speech on the Punjab tragedy in the House of Commons caused an uproar. At one point she quoted from the Bible, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" She went further and said intrepidly to the members of the House of Commons," You deserve no Empire. You today have lost your soul; you today have the stain of blood-guiltiness upon you, ..... no nation that rules by tyranny is free; it is the slave of its own despotism."
 Her golden voice made all such utterances forceful and exceedingly amusing. For instance, for her role in the historic Salt March in April 1930, one of the British officials approached her, touched her on the arm and said: “Sarojini Naidu, you are under arrest.” She laughingly shook off his hand and said, "I'll come, but don't touch me." Furthermore, she said to the police," We ask no quarters and we shall give none, and I will cut the barbed wire with pliers, and seize the salt with my own hands. In  making this heaven-sent opportunity, I find something to bless, not to fear and regret."
In the wake of her arrest, "..... her ebullient spirit did not desert her," narrates the author, as she asks others who would be taken to jail to get their toothbrushes first and then get on the police van. Once when asked about her experience in jail by Robert Bernays, the author of the book The Naked Fakir, a biography of Mahatma Gandhi, she answered that she had a splendid time there and that she did not want to come out as she had planted some beautiful flowers that were about to bloom. Since the civil surgeon would not keep her request, she has to come out. Bernays, like innumerable others, was highly impressed by her personality. He added, "Fortunately many Indians, for all their solemnity, have a sense of humour. Mahatma Gandhi's comment about his incarceration is equally hilarious as he said that he was quite happy in jail and making up for his arrears of sleep. The Guru and his earnest disciple, Sarojini, shared a great sense of humour along with other serious goals of life. She developed a lifelong bond with the Mahatma that was frank, cordial, childlike and at the same time solemn. She would refer to him playfully as 'little man', 'ugly little man', 'mickey mouse', etc., feeling no qualms about it. Such was the relationship.” She once said about Mahatma Gandhi in his presence that "he looked exactly like a bat" as has been quoted by H. N. Brailsford in one of his write-ups on Sarojini Naidu in Hindustan Review entitled "Sarojini Naidu, A Great Human Being" --- a special Sarojini Naidu supplement in April 1949, a month after her death on March 2, 1949.